Weekend Dominium

I
The gates of Friday loosen with a sigh,
Their hinges creak like guards relieved of post;
The clocks unbutton collars, slip the tie,
And time forgets the duties it engrossed.
The air grows wide, as if the world expands,
Released from ledgers, lists, and iron decree;
Even the wind removes its weekday plans
And strolls through streets in idle liberty.

II
The morning wakes without a sharp command,
No trumpet blasts, no summons stern and loud;
The sun reclines in calm, unhurried land,
A monarch resting from a toiling crowd.
The pillow speaks a language soft and deep,
Persuading limbs to linger where they lie;
And dreams, reluctant prisoners of sleep,
Delay their flight across the opening sky.

III
The kettle hums a hymn of gentle steam,
Its silver throat reciting ease and grace;
The coffee pours like some forgiving dream
That warms the quiet kingdom of the face.
No tyrant hour demands a swift reply,
No marching task invades the tranquil mind;
Thought wanders free beneath a kinder sky
Where deadlines lose the power once assigned.

IV
The roads forget their weekday urgency,
Their shoulders slack, their voices growing mild;
They welcome feet that walk in vagrancy,
Led not by need but wonder running wild.
Shop windows wink like conspirators of play,
Inviting eyes to linger, drift, and roam;
And chance, long barred during the workweek day,
Steps forth and bids the wandering soul come home.

V
Laughter rings out like coins of minted light,
Exchanged with strangers richer than with kings;
Its currency is spent from noon till night
And multiplies with every sound it brings.
Conversations bloom like sudden spring,
Petals of stories opening in air;
Each word becomes a bright unmeasured thing
No schedule ever ordered or could spare.

VI
The noon arrives without a throne to claim,
It lounges like a guest who plans to stay;
No crown of tasks, no scepter tipped with blame,
No herald shouting what we must obey.
A book unfolds its continents of thought,
Inviting quiet voyages within;
The mind embarks for lands that toil forgot,
Where clocks are myths and rest is discipline.

VII
Afternoon glows in amber-tinted peace,
The shadows stretch like cats along the ground;
The hurried pulse of weekdays finds release,
And slower rhythms shape the hours’ sound.
The breeze speaks softly in a dialect
Unknown to calendars and office walls;
It whispers truths that labor would reject —
That life is more than duty’s iron calls.

VIII
The evening lights its lanterns one by one,
Like constellations kindled down below;
The day retires, its mild dominion done,
And night ascends in velvet-footed flow.
Music escapes from windows half-ajar,
A constellation forged of mortal art;
Each note becomes a small ascending star
That charts a silver atlas through the heart.

IX
The night expands its generous domain,
A velvet empire spread from pole to pole;
No curfew tolls, no overseer of pain
Records the wandering of the waking soul.
Dreams gather like a parliament of fire,
Each spark proposing worlds yet unexplored;
And sleep itself, a diplomatic choir,
Signs treaties long the weekdays had ignored.

X
Soft Sunday dawn walks barefoot through the sky,
Not bold like Monday’s armored, urgent stride;
It hums a hymn no trumpets amplify,
A pilgrim light that glides instead of rides.
The roofs receive its pale, forgiving gold,
The streets lie hushed as if in chapel air;
The world seems wiser, calmer, faintly old,
As though reflection had installed it there.

XI
The day matures in contemplative hue,
Its hours like monks in meditation pass;
The wind writes psalms in strokes of shifting blue
Across the parchment of the bending grass.
Memory sits beside the mind’s clear stream,
Dropping bright pebbles of remembered days;
Each ripple glows as if it were a dream
Returning clothed in thoughtful, golden haze.

XII
At last the twilight seals the kingdom’s gate,
The crown of leisure lifted from the land;
For Monday waits beyond the walls of fate,
An iron scepter ready in its hand.
Yet hidden still within the heart remains
A key no coming labor can repeal:
The realm that once broke all the weekday chains —
The quiet crown the weekends let us feel.